Jerry Drake Varnell, 23, was arrested on Saturday over his alleged plans to detonate an explosives-laden van outside an Oklahoma bank
The family of a man arrested for allegedly trying to detonate a bomb outside an Oklahoma bank say he is a paranoid schizophrenic who was taken advantage of by the FBI.
Jerry Drake Varnell, 23, allegedly tried to detonate what he thought was an ammonium nitrate fertilizer bomb inside a van Saturday morning outside a BancFirst building in Oklahoma City.
Federal authorities say the explosives failed because the device was a dummy he built with the help of an undercover FBI agent posing as his accomplice.
Varnell faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted of trying to trigger the same sort of bomb that Timothy McVeigh used to slaughter 168 people outside the city’s Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in 1995.
Varnell’s parents, Clifford and Melonie Varnell, issued a statement after his first court appearance claiming the FBI took advantage of a mentally ill person.
‘He is a paranoid schizophrenic and is extremely susceptible to different types of ideology that normal people would deem immoral,’ his family said Wednesday.
‘Underneath his condition, he is a sweet-hearted person and we are extremely shocked that this event has happened.’
She said he had suffered ‘countless’ full-blown schizophrenic delusional episodes and had been in and out of mental health hospitals since he was 16. She said that with the help of medication, however, he was able to lead the semblance of a normal life, attending college and recently enrolling in welding school.
Inside: This what a federal indictment says Jerry Drake Varnell called his ‘bunker’ where he was preparing for the collapse of the federal government and where he plotted a bomb attack
Buried: The Varnells surrounded the storage container with earth on three sides, which they say was a precaution against storms. The area is regularly in the path of tornadoes
The family claim the FBI knew he was schizophrenic because the state had deemed him mentally incompetent and gave his parents legal guardianship. They added that these court documents had been sealed from the public.
His mother provided DailyMail.com with court documents that show she and her husband Clifford were appointed legal guardians of their son in 2013.
Mrs Varnell blamed the FBI informant for putting ideas into her impressionable son’s head.
‘Schizophrenics always have conspiracy theories and feel everyone is out to get them,’ she said.
‘They trust no one and there is no doubt in my mind that this informant began this hate against the government and my son followed along because others easily influence him.’
‘What the public should be looking at is the fact that the FBI gave our son the means to make this happen.
‘He has no job, no money, no vehicle, and no driver’s license, due to the fact that he is schizophrenic and we, his parents, do everything we can possible to keep him safe and functional.
‘The FBI came and picked him up from our home, they gave him a vehicle, gave him a fake bomb, and every means to make this happen none of which he had access to on his own.
‘The FBI should have filed conspiracy on our son and had him committed to a mental institution. They should not have aided and abetted a paranoid schizophrenic to commit this act.’
Court documents say Varnell, an alleged anti-government radical, told agents he was prepping for the collapse of the US by recruiting a militia and stashing food and supplies in an underground bunker.
Family: Melonie Varnell (third from right) says Jerry Drake Varnell (second right) is a schizophrenic who with the help of his family had lived a normal life despite delusional episodes. She says the FBI gave him a ‘bomb’ and that the informant led him on
Varnell’s family say he is a paranoid schizophrenic who was taken advantage of by the FBI
DailyMail.com obtained the first images of the alleged secret lair this week, which is hidden inside a rusting shipping container behind his family’s ranch in Sayre, Oklahoma.
The 20ft steel compartment is buried by mounds of earth on three sides and camouflaged by overgrown weeds and flowers.
Varnell’s mother told DailyMail.com his ‘bunker’ was just an innocuous family storm shelter. She said it was filled only with an assortment of junk including engine parts, old furniture, fishing rods, a stove pipe and an old children’s car seat.
‘We do not have an underground bunker,’ she said via email. ‘We built our home a few years ago and bought a storage container, as we use it for a storm shelter.
‘We only recently pushed dirt up around it to make it safe. The building is used for storage and is not a bunker full of food and supplies, in fact the doors close from the outside.
‘It has neither electricity nor anything that would make it habitable.’
Varnell appeared in federal court Monday afternoon on a charge of attempting to use explosives to destroy a building in interstate commerce.
Court documents reveal that an informant came forward in April to warn the FBI that Varnell was ‘upset’ with the government and wanted to blow up a building.
He was an apparent sympathizer of the ‘3 percenter’ militia movement that advocates armed resistance against Federal efforts to restrict gun ownership.
‘I think I’m going to go with what the okc bomber used,’ Varnell allegedly told the source in an encrypted text message.
‘What happened in Oklahoma City was not an attack on America, it was retaliation,’ he later said. ‘The time for revolution is now.’
Varnell is accused of trying to detonate a bomb outside a BancFirst branch in the center of Oklahoma City on Saturday morning
McVeigh killed 168 people when he exploded a fertilizer bomb outside a federal building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995. He was executed in 2001 for the crime
Varnell allegedly told the undercover agent that he initially wanted to blow up the Federal Reserve Building in Washington, D.C. – eight blocks from the White House.
He also considered attacking data centers of Facebook and the Internal Revenue Service before settling on the bank in Oklahoma City.
In a series of text messages with the informant, Varnell ‘claimed to have a bunker for when the world (or United States) collapsed’, according to the complaint.
Varnell allegedly admitted to an undercover FBI agent that he wanted to stage a bombing similar to the deadly 1995 bombing by anti-government extremist Timothy McVeigh (above) in the same city
‘I’m out for blood,’ he alleged texted. ‘When militias start getting formed I’m going after government officials when I have a team.’
Varnell was introduced to an undercover FBI agent referred to as the ‘Professor’ who pretended to help him plan an attack to ‘cripple the government’.
Varnell said he wanted to detonate the blast after hours to avoid the sort of mass casualties inflicted by McVeigh, who was executed by lethal injection in June 2011.
But when told there would inevitably be some people inside, Varnell allegedly replied: ‘You got to break a couple of eggs to make an omelet.’
According to the complaint, Varnell and the FBI agent assembled the device from inert materials including blasting caps and dynamite and loaded it into a van.
Varnell then allegedly drove the vehicle to Oklahoma City in the early hours of Saturday and tried to detonate it three times with a cell phone.
He was arrested immediately when it failed to explode. An unpublished Facebook post Varnell had supposedly prepared in advance said the attack was ‘retaliation against the freedoms that have been taken away from the American people’.